Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust is to pilot an artificial intelligence (AI) support tool, which aims to ‘change the way skin cancer is assessed and treated by the trust’.
Through the trust’s expanding partnership with Skin Analytics, which provides AI-supported teledermatology services, it will pilot the tool – called DERM – which it hopes will improve the skin cancer diagnostic pathway and help save both clinician time and NHS resources.
The roll-out of DERM, which ‘analyses specialist magnified images of skin lesions using AI algorithms’, aims to increase how quickly patients with potentially cancerous skin lesions are assessed.
The partnership with Skin Analytics is part of the CW Innovation programme, a joint initiative between the trust and CW+, which ‘identifies, tests and evaluates new solutions that improve patient care, patient experience and the way the trust’s hospitals are run’.
Skin Analytics was also part of the Digital Health.London Accelerator (DH.LA) programme, and the current project is funded by an Artificial Intelligence in Health and Care award – which is run by the Accelerated Access Collaborative (AAC) in partnership with NHSE/I (previously NHSX) and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).
Dr Lucy Thomas, Consultant Dermatologist at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS FT, says: “Like many departments, dermatology has severe backlogs due to the COVID-19 pandemic and this project will evaluate the impact this AI solution can have on relieving pressure on services, reducing delays in detection and treatment and improving outcomes for patients with skin cancer as well as those with non-urgent skin diseases.
“The roll-out of DERM is another great example of how we, as a trust, are responding to the evolving needs of our patients which couldn’t have come at a better time to aid recovery and give us more time with the patients most in need of our help”.
Bruno Botelho, Director of Digital Operations, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS FT, added:”The trust has always supported innovation and digital solutions to improve the delivery of care in the population we serve, and we are very much looking forward to evaluating the innovative DERM device, assessing its impact on patient care and experience as well as our workforce.”
As part of HTN’s Interview Series, we recently spoke with Bruno Botelho, to hear about his role, current projects at the trust and its vision for the future.
